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About Us |
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A Story of Triumph |
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Love/hate relationship with food |
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| I began my love/hate relationship with food around the age of 12. The love part involved the way it made me feel: somehow the after-school cookies drowned out the anxieties built up from my day. I adhered to a daily ritual of heading right to the cupboard for the Twinkies and Archway cookies as soon as I got home from school. Then, I zoned out in a binge until I felt better. The hate part developed later as I began to gain weight, which made me feel even worse about myself and increased my worries about not fitting in. At the age of 14, I took an aerobics class for gym credit. I loved it because it seemed to take the edge off my anxiety and I felt naturally good at it. I also knew that it kept my weight down as I continued my after-school binges. At the time, I didn't know how to cope with my problems any other way. I'm not even sure I had an awareness that I was bingeing or why. | ||||
A vicious cycle |
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| So a cycle began: exercising, bingeing, feeling guilty, exercising, and so on. After highschool, I joined the local health club and began to learn about weight training and bodybuilding. Wow! That felt even better than aerobics, as I got stronger and changed the shape of my body. I also felt that somehow I fit in there. I loved going to the gym and learning everything I could. Over the years, I became obsessed with learning about exercise and nutrition. All this knowledge gave me a sense of power, yet I continued to binge. A nagging feeling inside me kept asking, "What's wrong with you? You know all this stuff and you're still struggling with your weight. You should have the perfect body by now." Often, my weight went up and down. I used bodybuilding as my excuse. If I gained weight, I rationalized that as "bulking up" and getting stronger. Then later, I would set strict boundaries to lose or "cut down." In reality, bodybuilding was part of the problem. As I pressured myself to shape my body, I binged. | ||||
Still not good enough |
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| Five years ago, with all this comprehensive knowledge and first-hand understanding, I decided to start my own personal training business. I felt certain I could help people. I knew what it felt like to work hard for every little change in my physique and to constantly struggle with food. Initially, I pressured myself to be a good trainer, beating myself up when I sometimes still binged. I felt like a hypocrite. Wrestling with perfectionism increased the pressure I put on myself. On one hand, when I binged, I belittled myself for not being a good trainer. On the other hand, I told myself I could really help clients because they would know I understood the issues on a personal level. Even with all this going on inside me, I did support my clients by helping them see their own food patterns, which gave them the power of choice. | ||||
Taking a stand |
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| The stress of my divorce three years ago caused me to again act out with food. I had hit bottom. I told myself I would kick this bingeing thing. Of course, I had said that many times before, but this time I had a different level of commitment. I would do whatever it took. I set my mind to find out what it would take. | ||||
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Creating a program that worked for me |
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| First, I realized I needed to completely accept myself as I truly was, perfections and imperfections included. I said to myself, "Okay, I do this. I binge as a way to mask my feelings." Next, I realized that the strategy of bingeing didn't serve to keep me from feeling the feelings any more. And, the sugar didn't even taste good to me. I decided I needed a whole new relationship with my feelings. I started by allowing and acknowledging all that I felt. Then, I let myself feel the feelings. If I felt mad, I let myself feel mad. If I felt sad, I let myself feel sad and cry. If I felt scared, I allowed myself to feel the fear. I had even kept myself separate from feeling happy, so I allowed myself to feel happy, too! I accepted myself as an emotional person. Not good or bad, just true. I gave myself time to get my feelings out of my body by journaling or talking with a friend. I paid close attention to when I felt actual hunger and when I felt obsessed to eat. I began to see when I avoided my feelings by overeating just to get the food "high." I noticed what was going on in my life and how I talked to myself. I observed everything from how I celebrated with food to how I felt relief with food. This new awareness gave me true understanding of my behavior, which empowered me to make conscious decisions. | ||||
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A choice: feed my emotions or nourish my body |
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| By taking the time to truly observe myself without judgment, I gave myself the huge gift of making a choice: to feed my emotions or to nourish my body. Today, I have a completely different relationship with myself and with the food I eat. The journey doesn't have to take you decades as it took me. I'd love to share my program with you. Through coaching, we can work through these things together, skipping all my trial and error! | ||||
